"Netflix of non-fiction" pushes into Australia

By Dominic White

January 31, 2016 — 7.15pm

Netflix may dominate the subscription video-on-demand industry but the burgeoning market is already showing signs of fragmentation, as evidenced by the emergence of cheaper, niche players such as CuriosityStream.

Launched in March 2015 by John Hendricks, a year after he left the Discovery Channel he had founded three decades earlier, CuriosityStream is tapping the growing market for "infotainment", targeting lovers of science, technology, history and nature documentaries. One tech website dubbed it "the Netflix for non-fiction".

Next World with Michio Kaku, the scientist, is one of CuriosityStream's most popular shows.

"It is niche but it has the opportunity to become mainstream," says Hendrick's daughter Elizabeth Hendricks North, who is president of the company. "It's very hard to find good documentary content on TV anymore and there is a core audience who want deep dives into these subjects."

CuriosityStream was confident enough in its licensing arrangements to open up the service to Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom late last year. It offers a library of about 1000 titles for US$2.99 ($4.30) a month in standard definition or US$5.99 in HD, undercutting the much broader Netflix.

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Elizabeth Hendricks North, president of CuriosityStream.

Global expansion was a big leap given the service began as a humble website to stream lectures by popular scientists such as Michio Kaku – and other speakers such as self-help author Deepak Chopra – from retreats organised by Ms Hendricks in Colorado, beginning in 2013.

She explained that her father, who had long dreamed of advertising-free documentary programming, stepped in to help and the service became his "next chapter after Discovery". He has funded the project to date himself.

Mimicking Netflix

"We found out that a real veteran producer Steve Burns (the former head of programming for National Geographic) was available and we brought him on board to see if he could help us figure out more programmes to show," Ms Hendricks told Fairfax Media.

Burns sourced documentaries from the BBC, NHK in Japan and others including Flame Productions in Australia to launch the service.

Lectures by Michio Kaku were carried by CuriosityStream when the service began.

Mimicking Netflix's push into original content, the team has also created its own series. One of them, Exploring Quantum History with Brian Greene is one of the service's two highest-rated programmes.

"Our top two shows are about quantum physics, which is extremely surprising but we do have great filmmakers," she says. (The other is The Secrets of Quantum Physics – a co-production by PBS and the BBC).

Michio Kaku is a popular scientist.

Ms Hendricks says the service's average subscriber is male and in their 30s.

It's an audience that is also likely to be tech savvy enough to download content illegally or simply hunt it down on YouTube, which raises questions about the ability of a niche service like this to stay the course.

CuriosityStream also faces fierce competition not just from Netflix but others. Locally that means two other local SVOD services which have documentary content in their own libraries – Stan, owned by Nine Entertainment Co and Fairfax Media (owner of The Australian Financial Review), and Presto, owned by Foxtel and Seven West Media.

Kids education has traction

But the services, which claims to be attracting some mothers keen to bolster their kids' education, has gained some early traction with its cheap price point. It got onto Amazon's Prime SVOD platform before Christmas and could break even in year three depending on how aggressively it expands.

Ms Hendricks would not reveal active users – which are thought to be below 1 million – but said subscriber numbers had grown at 20 per cent a week on average since launch.

"I've met a couple of people who say 'all I watch on Netflix is documentaries' to which I say 'why pay the full price when can pay our price?'," she said.

"With other big streaming services you need to know the exact name of the documentary or find a good keyword to get to it. We've added additional metadata to all of our titles so it's easier to find by topic."

CuriosityStream says it has a 60 per cent subscriber retention rate.

Sustaining that will depend in large part on the quality and quantity of its original content and how much more competition comes down the ever-broadening SVOD pipeline.